Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, the man NDC love to Hate

Throughout the spectrum of Ghana’s socio-political landscape, one man stands out prominently as the most morbidly hated by his political opponents and on a milder competitive note by even some of his own NPP family siblings. Adreba is by way of this article investigating why this strong and heavy political pillar, a legal giant, a family man and a friend of many, so purposely handpicked for such bitter insinuations; basing the entire discussion on psychological generalisations as to why people hate others, hence why especially Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo, a Party leader and presidential aspirant who is more than likely to be Ghana’s President in less than two years to come is such a victim of hate. As a proem to this script, here are randomly selected excerpta from stanzas of Rudyard Kipling’s celebrated poem “If” which when diagnosed in detail are germane to my thoughts, perceptions and personal knowledge of the most hated man in contemporary Ghanaian politics.

If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you; If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, …………; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, ………; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken, twisted by knaves, to make a trap for fools; Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, and stoop and build them up with worn-out tools, …………; If you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, and lose, and start again from your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss, …………………; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew to serve your turn long after they are gone, and so hold on when there is nothing in you except the will which says to them: ‘Hold on’; ………………..; If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue; O walk with kings, nor lose the common touch; If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, …………yours is the earth and everything that’s in it and which is more, you’ll be a man, my son. As a personal friend of Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo coupled with my little knowledge of him, I sit and cogitate over all apparent reasons why people hate and portray him as an odious personality to be something beyond my comprehension. Here is an all-round man who has not lost the common touch and would relate with all persons. In his candid and Socratic disposition he would speak his truth quietly and clearly and listen to others for their story however, Nana would brook no nonsense. He is a rare genre self-made man who is formidable in thoughts and ideas with pragmatic approach to issues, qualities which clearly porrect him as a nonpareil legal brain, politician and businessman. In spite of his parage, he has never relaxed to depend on bequeathed family wealth and prestige but has sought to reach for the stars through strong bolts and iron bars. To sum everything up, he is instar omnium as Cicero described Plato. As our elders say, he has washed his hands so clean that he dines with Kings and Queens. If naked truth would be told, if people compare themselves with him, they do not just become dwarfed and vain but also bitter; he is therefore indeed so enviable to be proud of as a man of exceptional virtues and qualities to be pointed to with pride which in Islam would be expressed succinctly as Maashallah (God has willed it), also expressed in the metaphysics of morals in Buddhist terms as ‘mudita’, same as Halleluiah in Judaeo-Christian phrase (taking joy in the good fortune of another) Instead of the above, the NDC as to whether they are a mishallowed group of people with one accord would in bewilderment lament, wail and execrate people who earn their succeed through hard work and sweat but would sing praises to kleptons who don’t earn but usurp from public coffers to be hailed as heroes. The above extracts from Kipling’s ‘If’ are only provided as food for thought relevant to Nana Addo’s foresight, his virtues, what he stands for, his beliefs, his strengths and weaknesses etc to be more than enough to be commented on in this article for lack of space. What therefore makes people bitterly hate others?

People who wonder why others hate and detest them must first assess themselves however, whereas some people invite hatred for themselves through their conduct in actions and words spoken others are hated for their excellence and so wish for their downfall in what is expressed as schadenfreude because they harbour envy and or jealousy, hence hatred. The concept of hate has complex sources yet besides self-induced causes, majority of cases boil down to envy, jealousy and fear. Hating Nana Addo is the domino effect of one ill-willing negative thinking melancholic, demagogic, narcissistic maunder, who in his misfortune of being a filius nullius, has never enjoyed and experienced paternal love, so loves to hate the success of others who have enjoyed what he has lacked coupled with their fortune in whatever form it takes, especially where parental up-bringing has been a major factor.

Envy is a powerful negative feeling with a grudging desire for another's excellence, advantage, superior quality, achievement, or possession and either desires it or wishes that the other lacked it, which is condemned in the Decalogue and in all religious literature as evil and satanic. Nana Addo has enriched his naturally endowed parage with all other excellences through hard work and dedication by consecrating his image and personality to truth and honesty that have been rewarded and blessed which make him an enviable homme extraordinaire. His political opponents of rival NDC have been so chaffed inward to narcissistic wound that is propelling them into irate rage and anger at being deprived of his superior qualities. On NDC Jealousy of Nana Addo, it can best be summed up as emotions of negative thoughts and feelings of insecurity, fear, and anxiety. By reason of these concerns, the NDC have chosen to develop sharp tongue attitude to cast insinuations and attacks on him personally by way of ad hominem abuse such as insults in a bid to belittle him because he poses a heavy and more than potential threat to them as President of Ghana in-waiting in order to invalidate his argument. These tactics are logically fallacious because insults and even true negative facts on Nana’s personal character as a political opponent have nothing to do with the logical merits of his arguments and assertions. They are using insults, jostling and humiliation as at Cape Coast and Akropong as a psyching out tool against this formidable political figure for him to suffer and feel low self-worth and esteem but they can be assured that nana Addo is immovable. The more they continue in that, the less credible they become as a group as well as the message they intend to pass across. In 1741 this strategy was used against plantation slaves in the West Indies where two koromantine slaves Coffee and Quarco, leaders of slave riots were burnt in the presence of other slaves but the strategy back-fired against the slave owners. The underlying factor in the dynamic of NDC verbal abuse on Nana Addo is the complex of low regard for themselves as a political entity that has no credible leader and it is not capable of matching just one person in the NPP who appears too strong for them to compete with. Though the NDC is composed of varied individuals they seem to have a common trait as pseudologues, they appear to be intolerant of opponents, they exhibit angry and abusive disposition as a common cultural factor, they are inclined to negativity and mediocrity and feel insecure hence their fear of persons of high or potentially high performance with upright disposition. Generally, according to neurobiologists people who harbour fear have increased response in the amygdala which is a key brain structure responsible for fear. It is involved in the processing of negative emotions such as fear and anger et al. Neurobiological research has come out with facts that people with a more severe social phobia show a correlation with increased response and activity in the amygdala which can only be mitigated by the rostral anterior cingulate cortex which works to dampen the activities in the amygdala. It is so strange that a whole group of people, some of whom do not even know their object of hate can come together to hate him with such morbidity to the extent that somebody would commit suicide if he should ever be elected to become President of Ghana. (Any way I have a strong rope already noosed and ready to give away freely for the purpose). This “senseless” mass hatred syndrome of a “jewel” like Nana Addo is the effect of herd-mentality, the mentality of image worshiping ignoramuses who frown on the ability to discern and decipher self-thought but choose to feed on demagoguery.

This group of people behave in this peculiar threatening behaviour that may be conceptualized as a maladaptive outgrowth of normal competitive urge for inter-relational dominance, because they find the NPP lack any trait to engage in confrontation or threaten violence. This is the reason why the clarion call to NPP supporters by Nana Addo to resist any form of intimidation by NDC has come to them as a surprise and a cause for concern. Secondly, weighing Nana Addo’s image and capabilities as President of Ghana to be would surely drown their performance hence they would try all possible means to block him from ever becoming the zealous person he and the NPP want him to be. Thirdly, Nana Addo’s political pedigree relating to Dr J B Danquah would elucidate what the latter and his UGCC/UP stood for which would make nonsense of the perceptions of all detractors of the UP tradition. Fourthly, The NDC do not want UP tradition to govern and out-shine their makeshift performance for decades such that Ghanaians would be witnesses to only NDC and the erstwhile Nkrumah-led CPP achievements yet the facula of good governance and able leadership of ex-President Kufuor of the NPP is already out-shining whatever light Ghanaians have seen previously. An Akufo Addo Presidency would stretch and extend the radius of the facula President Kufuor has established in eight years so he must be impeded at all cost. A one million dollar question is do the NDC really hate Nana Addo as they appear to be in their conduct? My guess is that they are caught in the “sour grape” adage. They would love to have a lucid foresighted and virtuous political personality like Nana Addo to lead their Party. The NDC’s hate preaching is the envy and jealousy of not having him on their side to boast of him, so this is the woe besieging Nana Addo; as Socrates says ‘from the deepest of desires come the deadliest of hate’.

We acquire all types of conduct and characteristics including love and hate through our thoughts and associations which we gather from our surroundings either from childhood or even at mature age, some of which we even don’t understand why we do or behave so. If almost 47% of the Ghanaian voting public can be so induced into a culture of hate and hating, then keep on extending this vicious cycle to spin through their generations to come would mean Ghana sitting on a time bomb. Thus we should therefore always try to be in good environment and associate with cultured people so that we can learn good things from others around us, for after-all, the hate-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and insults, come invariably from people so induced into automation that they don’t even understand what and the core reason why they should do what they do. It is nothing but lack of the spirit of tolerance. After-all, by listening to the hate preachers’ arguments, any reasonable thinking person knows they are factoid; not only do they expose their insulse, they remove all doubts about their insipience and question their claim to building a better Ghana.

Adreba Kwaku Abrefa Damoa, LLB; MPhil (London) London UK